Making Experience Matter

17 May 2014 Norway celebrated its 200-year jubilee of the country’s democratic constitution. The new exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center, BeDemocracy, invites visitors to debate the state of this 200-year-old democracy and reflect upon the role of social media in the democratic participation.

Expology has developed a fully dynamic exhibition where the input from visitors forms the content and expression of the exhibition. The overall concept is to create a living exhibition resembling a physical social media experience.

Visitors exploring the exhibition during the opening on 14 May 2014

The exhibition is based around four thematic walls with a signature color, each presents cases to elaborate on aspects of their respective theme; youth, public, global and surveillance. The cases leads to question visitors can respond to on a screen or on their mobile phone. The visitors’ responses are shown in a large circular sphere at the center of the exhibition. With the help of Kinect technology visitors can “like” expressions displayed, thereby creating a rank where the most liked expressions will form the final visual look of the exhibition in November 2014.

To broaden the democratic discussion, the exhibition has it own website and Twitter account @BeDemocracy. By this, persons from all around the world can engage in the discussion and create input to the sphere in the exhibition.

Visitor interacting with the exhibition.

BeDemocracy is a temporary exhibition on display from 14 May to 23 November 2014. The exhibition is developed in collaboration with the Nobel Peace Center and the Institute for Social Research. The exhibition is supported by Institusjonen Fritt Ord and the Norwegian Ministry of Culture.

Ergansenteret is a modern information center focusing on the digital and interactive outsourcing of knowledge about maritime cultural history, marine technology and the marine and maritime industries. The purpose is to make the maritime/marine industries more accessible for the broader public.

The center would like to have a modern and innovative image with an educational programme for the school system and use technological communications methods.

Ergansenteret will function as a portal for the stretch of coast from Bud-Kristiansund, which is one of the national “Cultural Monuments and Value Creation” pilot projects, under the direction of Møre and Romsdal County Council, the Directorate for Cultural Heritage and the Ministry of the Environment, starting on national tourist routes.

The main theme of the center’s information package is the relationship between the sea and society in the past, present and future with a focus on marine resources, maritime cultural history, marine technology, marine geo and bio-project planning. There is also a section about the future forms of marine-based energy production – gas, oil, wind, wave power etc.

All mediation of information at the Ergansenteret will be based on experience and participation. Visitors will be involved in an engaging and thought-provoking manner. They will experience situations, dilemmas and consequences themselves. This will occur through interaction, interplay and experiences involving the senses.

The message is mediated at two different levels and there is content both for those with a special interest and for the general public. The center will be rich in stories that visitors can explore and experience themselves.

After the opening, the center will be a force for spreading knowledge about maritime cultural history and marine/maritime industries as well as being a significant player within this information field, both nationally and internationally.

In 2014 you can have a close encounter with the northern lights in Alta, the City of the Northern Lights. The newly opened Northern Lights Cathedral is home to the Northern Lights Attraction developed by Expology. Here tourists and locals can get up close with this natural wonder and through song and movement create their own northern light.

The Northern Lights Attraction is an experience centre based on Expology’s winning concept ”Become one with the Northern Lights”. The concept lets visitors interact with the northern lights in three main attractions, which gives a multi-sensuous experience of two myths about and the scientific explanation behind the northern lights. In the installations, visitors create unique northern light patterns by dragging electrons through the Earth’s atmosphere and by singing and waving to the northern lights.

Visitors are also able to get a deeper knowledge of the northern lights through communication using ultraviolet graphics, films of the real northern lights and the solar storms that shoot particles towards the Earth appearing on the sky above the polar circle. School classes can explore the science behind the phenomenon even further in the digital role-play game ”Northern Lights scientist for a day”.

The Northern Lights Attraction is developed in association with the Municipality of Alta and regional experience providers who work to strengthen Alta’s position as the City of Northern Lights and attract more tourists to the city.

Being a small Norwegian company with great international ambitions does not necessarily make for an easy life so we were delighted to discover that we would receive some much appreciated support from Næringslivets Internasjonaliseringsstiftelse (NORINT). NORINT kindly awarded Expology with a grant of no less than 750.000 Norwegian Kroner for our work towards an international strategy! We are extremely grateful for the recognition and support which means a lot for our company going forward. Thank you NORINT!

Image above: Chairman of the NORINT board, Leif Frode Onarheim, handing Managing Director of Expology Solutions, Mona Myrvang Johansen, the diploma confirming the grant alongside the other winners at the official ceremony in June.

A hub of the European aerospace industry, Toulouse was a fitting host city for the Ecsite conference this year with the theme Space and Time, Unlimited. For the fourth time Expology exhibited at Business Bistro, the networking area of Ecsite. We met up with colleagues, collaboration partners and clients to discuss science communication and showcase our projects and solutions.

"Digital media as a medium for learning", "What constitutes interactivity?" and "What makes science spaces memorable?". These are a few examples of the 75 panel sessions, debates and workshops that took place over the three day conference.

The grand finale of the Nocturne party at the space theme park Cité de l’espace featured highlights such as a talented drum troupe, fireworks and (almost) a space launch. We posted a video for those of you who weren’t there, would like to relive the moment or did not have the front row view we were lucky to have.

Engineerium will provide a meeting place for the oil and gas industry, educational institutions and general public. At Engineerium there will be learning experiences for students, employees and business partners.

Meet engineers from Aker Solutions. Participate in an energy production game. Create a personal innovative profile. Calculate your own HSE (Health, Safety and Environment) risk profile. Learn about Norwegian oil and gas technologies on a global market. Experiment with natural science phenomena and explore how the oil and gas industry relate to them. Learn about the history of Aker Solutions and explore different environmental perspectives on the oil and gas industry.

Expology is Aker Solutions' partner in content development, design and production of Engineerium exhibits.